Second Degree
by sushirapper
Summary: Sometimes, it is easy to forget that Sabo is as much Ace's brother as he is Luffy's, and that ice can burn just as easily as fire. Or the one where Sabo finds out about how Ace died and Koala finds out that grief has more than one form.


_Look, I dunno, guys. This just happened. Because I am so obviously Not Over Ace's Death. Like, at all. Not even remotely. Anyway, this is ridiculous and a complete mess and it hurt writing it and just... enjoy, I guess?_

 _Title inspired by The Script's Six Degrees of Separation, and refers to the line "First, you'll think the worst is the broken heart, what's gonna kill you is the second part"._

 _I do not own One Piece and all rights belong to Eiichiro Oda-sensei._

 _- **shira**_

* * *

The room was trashed.

The furniture was destroyed. The walls were crumbling apart at the edges and the rooms on their other sides were partially destroyed as it seemed as though something had been thrown hard enough at them to blast a hole through the next three rooms; whoever had been in the general area had already vacated the premises long ago since the beginning of a certain man's fit of anger. The windows were nonexistent, the glass practically dust as their shards littered the ground. Wood and stone were debris on the floor as well, nothing left of a size large enough to even make sense of what they used to be.

And in the middle of it all, lay the Revolutionary Army's Chief of Staff, on his back on the ground with one arm carelessly flung to the side and the other covering his eyes.

Koala ducked under the wrecked doorway and stopped at his feet. She picked up her partner's hat which lay to one side of him and brushed off the scattered feathers that she assumed came from the goose down bed, surveying the damage.

 _Well, it could have been worse_ , she thought with a grimace twirling the top hat easily in her nimble fingers. She knew he could have easily brought down the wing of the base they were in if he felt like it, so she supposed she should be thankful he'd limited his tantrum to one room (or seven).

Still, letting him off easy wasn't who she was to him, and it wouldn't do any good to start trying to be someone else now. So she took a deep breath in and kicked one of the stones lying around violently enough to send it straight through one of the surprisingly intact corners of the far wall.

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE _DOING_ , IDIOT?!"

Sabo barely even flinched as the rock made one wall tumble down completely near his head. He didn't flinch when Koala kicked at his foot suspiciously either, wondering if he had somehow fallen asleep.

So she yelled again, and kicked him some more, then kept yelling. She screamed every insult and lie she could think up to make him stand up, and when that didn't work, she kept kicking him.

Nothing.

Koala sighed, knowing how this was going to play out now. If conventional methods wouldn't work, she'd try something else.

Still twirling the hat in one hand, she took a seat on the nearest surface: a mound of shredded wood she assumed used to be the bed.

"Sabo..." she began, then paused, unsure how to proceed. Because this was Sabo and this wasn't how they worked because she was his partner in all the ways that counted, but not in the way that could help him now. But this was _Sabo_ , and he was her best friend and her commander and they needed him— _she_ needed him—to be okay, so she forged ahead anyway. "If this is about Ace..."

There. A twitch.

She watched him a little longer, waiting to see if he would say anything, before continuing.

"It wasn't fair, was it?" Koala's voice was quiet, remembering her own pain when she'd heard of her hero's death. "It never should have happened."

Sabo snorted in reply. She blinked, not sure what to make of it.

She went to say something but was interrupted by Sabo all but snarling, " _He's such a fucking idiot_ ," and Koala startled back a little, unused to this vehemence in his voice.

She had expected grief, she had expected pain, but she hadn't expected this pure, boiling **_anger_ **directed at someone he'd shed innumerable tears for just a few days ago. She hadn't expected the kind of hate she only ever saw in him when nobles of any type were involved.

"Sabo?" she called, worried.

But he didn't seem to hear her at all.

"He fucking gets himself killed in front of our little brother— _in front of Luffy_ —and he has the _gall_ to die with a goddamned smile on his face," he spat instead of a reply.

The girl steeled herself, knowing she had to ask. "I take it you asked Ivan-san what happened when... during the war?"

He pushed himself up suddenly, half-sitting with his elbows supporting him as he growled the next words.

"I bet he was even _happy_ that he died."

Koala's throat closed up, suddenly scared of someone she'd spent almost half her life with. She had never seen Sabo like this and she had no idea what to do.

But Sabo wasn't done yet. "He always thought he was worthless, you know? So fucking obsessed with his blood as Roger's son when no one else gave a damn. Not the bandits, not Makino, hell not even Garp. Luffy certainly didn't care. _I_ never cared."

His voice broke and Koala watched him swallow once, twice, before he let himself fall back with a thud, eyes screwed shut tightly.

"When we were younger," he said softly, "there was this time Garp was visiting for a training session. Lu was going on again about being Pirate King and Garp went to hit him—he wanted us to be marines back then, of all things."

He began laughing at the thought, the sound bordering on hysterical.

"Ace said something even stupider, if you can imagine, to get Garp's attention and the old geezer nearly tore him to pieces after. But Luffy was safe. And I'd be damned if he didn't look so fucking proud later, even though he denied doing it on purpose."

Koala wanted to run now. Because she hadn't asked, she had no right to hear of something so personal to him, not ever. Her brain swiftly put the pieces together, and the conclusion she came to was a horrifying one and she hoped to whatever god was out there that she was wrong. But a sinking feeling in her gut told her otherwise; there wasn't even any need to ask.

Sabo was quiet for a bit, and Koala pretended not to notice his tears as she tried to loosen her grip on his hat, her knuckles white from the effort of clutching too tight; she hadn't even noticed. When he spoke again, his voice sounded choked by his own tears.

"He—god fucking—he always wanted to stay and fight, he never wanted to run and I— _fuck_ I always told him that habit of his would get him killed one day."

Koala grimaced because there was only one response she could give that.

"You were right."

Sabo's voice was nothing but a soft rasp as he whispered, "It's kind of a shitty thing to be right about."

He drew himself up to sit again, this time with one leg still stretched out and the other bent at the knee to prop his arm on. Koala threw him his hat when he gestured for it, and she watched silently as he tugged it over his puffy eyes.

When he went on, his voice was still low, but a touch more stable. "Ace, he... He didn't think his life was worth anything, but his death... Well, that was worth so much to so many people, so I think that in his head, dying for someone was the height of loving them. But what he never understood was the one thing me and Lu asked for.

"We wanted him to _live_. Hard as it is, awful it might be, but we wanted him _here_ , with us. But I guess he never saw it that way, huh? Always gotta bleed before you can prove to yourself that you love someone, don't you, Ace?"

He was crying fully now, top hat tilted at an angle to hide his eyes, but his tears wouldn't stop streaming down his cheeks. His shoulders shook and Koala didn't want to be the one to break this silence.

Only she didn't have a choice. There was only one course of action left to her now.

She got up and walked away.

Sabo's voice reached her ears just as she made to duck through the broken down doorway again.

"I don't think I'm ever gonna forgive him for this, Koala."

She paused with a hand on the doorknob and spoke without turning around. "No, I don't imagine you would."

Looking over her shoulder, she met his bloodshot blue eyes head on and continued, "But then, _he_ can't ever forgive _you_ either, so that's fair, don't you think?"

He looked like he'd been punched in the gut.

Koala's fingers tightened on the doorway's ruined frame, threatening to crush it into powder herself as she refused to lower her gaze. Then he started laughing.

Her commanding officer lay back down in a violent fit of boisterous, mildly unhinged sounding guffaws. Tears were still streaming from his eyes, but Koala wasn't worried anymore.

She had to do the paperwork for his destroying part of the base anyway.


End file.
